


The Depths of the Heavens

by mresundance



Category: Agora (2009)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 01:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13377156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: Orestes remembers Hypatia.





	The Depths of the Heavens

Even after marriage, and his sons were born, he remembered her. Sometimes it was the hem of his wife’s tunic which caught him off guard, and he was reminded of her tunic, dusty and beautiful, coasting over the stones of the library. Sometimes it was a lump of dough, pale and soft as her skin. Other times -- and there was no excuse, no barrier between him and the past and the present -- he thought of her dark hair, unraveling in the night as she unbraided it. He remembered lying next to her in the dark while she enumerated the very cosmos. He’d take her hands, so strong and coarse, and kiss them. She smelled of papyrus and ink and sand.

“I will keep searching,” she said one night, still nattering on about her circles. As far as he was concerned she’d done whole lifetimes of thinking, and maybe, just maybe, should try her hand at living.

“Aren’t they glorious?” she said of the heavens and of course she was right. Hung with God’s grandeur, the wanderer Venus slung low and bright, the moon heavy and sharp as a scythe, and the stars blooming all around like small blue and white flowers.  

He wished with all his heart he could have kissed her then. But instead he laid stretched out by her side, watching the stars she so loved. And then afterwards said goodnight, lady, goodnight, listening to the the door of her house shut and lock behind him.

He dreamed of what kind of wife she’d be, what kind of mother. Certainly not like Aeliea. Aeliea always asked about his day and her fingers were so tender when she unclasped his cape. Aeliea orchestrated the children’s baths with military precision, and knew exactly what wares they had in the house and when more grain or fish was needed. Her touch responded to his and she lay down with him joyfully.

She, however, would almost certainly have forgotten to ask him about his day, going on about some new discovery. She would not have unclasped his cape, or known if the children needed baths at all. The wares in the house wouldn’t be empty, at least, she wasn’t that thoughtless, but she never responded to him and his touch. She was always up there, dancing among the stars.

Sometimes he wondered what her kiss would have been like. Would it have been like Aeliea’s, hot and burning as the sun himself? Or would it have been cooler, neater, burning like those distant stars?

He would never know. When he woke from his reveries, he knew this. And it made him ache, hard, down in his belly, until it sat there like a stone and even Aeliea could not coax more out of him than sorrow.

Sometimes he remembered her. She pulled him up into the depths of the heavens. A flicker, and then vanished.


End file.
